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It was new, it was exciting, and it was just enough to keep my lusty thoughts at bay during the day. I could forget about St. Martin and his anger issues and my "training" and the fet and my father and Mark and everything else for entire minutes at a time.
Since evenings were long and there was only so long I could loiter in the gym before my muscles turned to suet, I joined the law club. Most of the students in it were headed more toward paralegal careers or on to law schools, but there were enough of us law enforcement types to make for some interesting conversations.
We'd meet at the Student Union's on-campus Starbucks and drink coffee and talk until our throats were raw. We raised money to have the district attorney come talk to us as September started to wane. We studied together and exchanged stories if we were already working in the field.
That was questionable from a common sense angle. What sounds harmless is sometimes information best left unshared. I talked very briefly about Seattle PD, and it probably didn't matter. I didn't talk about being undercover or what had led me to Las Vegas. Most people assumed the story went as far as I told it: I wanted to apply for the DEA while I looked young enough to get away with undercover in colleges if not high schools.
Two guys assured me I could pull off high school.
Two girls hmm'd and haw'd and pretended I needed night cream and eye cream and – dissolved into giggles.
Maybe I didn't have that many female friends ever because I found them confusing and inexplicable. But I liked Jenna and Julie and the guys in the club, and it was nice to be part of something, especially since they didn't probe deeply. They were on a trajectory from high school to college to law enforcement or law school or paralegal studies. They knew I was heading to the DEA. It was obvious I was in the program so I didn't have to hide that, and I was hell and gone from Seattle – it seemed okay to say I'd been a cop. It was also nice that saying so didn't seem so overwhelmingly Wow! that there were a lot of questions.
The whole thing suited me.
Then James asked me out.
8
Annie
I couldn't stop pacing. Two hours until my date and everything I owned was spread across my apartment as if my closet had blown up. There were shoes, skirts, shirts, dresses, things I couldn't remember buying but must have worn in my real life. Because I seemed to recognize everything I'd worn when I was with Jesse and the Brotherhood did that make me a bad fiancée? That I remembered times with a man who sold drugs and had once dislocated my jaw?
But I already knew I was a bad fiancée. And now I wasn't any sort of fiancée and that was okay.
I considered calling one of the girls in my classes but I didn't want anyone to know I was dating someone from our program. Partly because it might not work out. Partly I suppose because I thought he had more at stake than I did. I could do school without people around, I just enjoyed having company for a change.
In the end I called my sister Emily. Maybe Emily because I kind of got along with her sometimes. None of my three sisters were anything like me. I was the outlier in polite speak, and the family black sheep in reality.
"Annie? This is a surprise."
Though she didn't sound like she thought it was a horrible one. That surprised me enough I almost spent some time chatting before asking her my questions but then I had less than two hours and my nerves were thrumming and so I – messed up.
"Em, hey, I know it's been a while and I promise if you want we can have a long conversation soon but right now I need advice."
She didn't quite sigh. Emily is somewhat proper, like she was born into the wrong time. By maybe a hundred years. But she gave the impression of it. "What's up, Anne?"
"I have a date," I said, no longer hoping for much. Outside the sun was going down in a beautiful array of pinks and golds.
To my surprise, Emily was instantly excited for me. "That's great! Hey, Dad said you enrolled in college. And you've moved! What's up? Are you still getting married?"
I bit my lip and checked the time on the microwave. I could talk to Em for thirty minutes and still have enough time to get ready. This was unusual enough – her being excited about anything in my life – that I kind of wanted to.
Which is why I had been dressed in nice jeans, boots, a white scoop neck t-shirt and red beads and earrings for about ten seconds when James arrived.
"Hey, you look great."
So did he. Long dark hair, big dark eyes, the kind of guy who five o'clock shadows by three p.m. He was wearing a white heavy cotton button-down and clean dark jeans. I drew in a breath, half wishing I could suggest we stay in. We could have a good time without ever taking in the Fremont Street Experience. Who needs ziplines?
But that wasn't fair. It also wasn't normal. This was a date, not a hookup. He deserved a chance to run like hell, I told myself, before he finds out what a freak you are.
And then strangely Cole St. Martin was in my head, telling me I didn't get to talk that way about me. It was unexpected. It was also really nice.
"So there's this place in Portland, tell me if you know it, because I was only there once and I wasn't – ahem! – in a strictly legal state of mind, at least at the time, and I've never been able to find it again."
I narrowed my eyes at him across the table. We'd ended up, after ziplining and going through a bunch of small shops and taking in all the new tech, in a taproom, looking at sandwiches and salads and local brews. "You realize I was in Seattle and that Seattle is not Portland?"
He made a face of shocked incomprehension which made me laugh. "Mercy! And you never were ever allowed out of Seattle?"
